Main Blog

As just about everyone would know by now, a couple of days ago on the 25th of April—which is Australia's ANZAC memorial day—a magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit Nepal. According to the MMS scale (Moment Magnitude Scale, see more on this here), which replaced the Richter scale in 1970, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake is more or less equivalent to a 12.5 megaton TNT-based bomb blast.

Nepal's earthquake wasn't a surprise to those that watch and forecast earthquakes. The entire subcontinent of India is being driven underneath Nepal at a rate of almost 2 inches per year by the normal tectonic movement of the Earth's crust. As an outcome of this, a massive pressure release earthquake has been on the cards for the last three to five years.

The following map shows the Indian plate (highlighted yellow).

GPS tracking and monitoring shows that the whole Indian plat shuddered about two feet northwards during this massive seismic event.

The Indian plate's travel north can be seen in the graphic at right; the Indian plate has been on its march north for many millions of years. It first crashed into the much larger Eurasian plate about eight million years ago and has since been pushing its way deeper and deeper into the Eurasian plate by forcing the resisting land mass upwards and inwards.

It is the pressure of the Indian plate crowding into the Eurasian plate that created the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayan mountains with peaks that tower over 8.5 kilometres above sea level.

Since the last major earthquake in the region in 1934 the Indian land mass has moved about 12 feet northwards.